No offence intended, but I believe many adults are still amateurs at life.
For many, life is a visible hot mess—chaotic, disorganised, and constantly in flux. And to be fair, there are good reasons for this. Work consumes our time and often feels like an abusive relationship. We’re pulled in all directions by partners, family, and friends. So when a rare moment of peace appears, it’s only natural to want to put our feet up.
But here’s the truth: if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
We have no choice but to use whatever discretionary time we can carve out to organise our lives. It’s not a chore—it’s an investment. Deferred gratification. Spend a little time now, save a lot more later. That time saved can be redirected into what truly matters to us.
I once bought a little bag that said: “Organisation is liberation.”
It stuck with me, because I believe it’s true. Frankly, I’m too lazy to be disorganised—it ends up taking far more effort and time than being organised ever does.
That said, even for the most committed among us, life can still spiral into chaos. Progress often comes with disruption. Two steps forward can require one giant step back.
In the past year, I’ve changed jobs, moved cities, and shifted houses three times. One of those stops was a share house from hell. The place—and its people—seemed fundamentally allergic to order. I’d try to get organised, turn my back, and somehow things were sabotaged. Why? Who knows. Who cares. Some people are simply locked into patterns of dysfunction, and they fight to maintain them.
To escape that mess, I had to buy my own place. That, in itself, is a major disruption. When you move house, your organisational infrastructure gets boxed up. You have to forge new systems in unfamiliar spaces.
If you’re also starting a new job at the same time, the pressure doubles. You want to hit the ground running, prove you were the right hire—yet you’re building systems to support high performance while functioning in a not-so-high-performance way. It’s like needing to fix your car so you can drive to work faster, but your boss is yelling: “You don’t have time—get here now!” So you plod along, knowing you’ll only be able to move faster once the systems are in place.
Building those systems is like the classic riddle of the fox, the chicken, and the grain. Everything is interconnected. You want to set up your garage gym—but first, you need to clear out the garage. To do that, you need to empty the shed. But before that, you need to fit lights and boards in the attic so things from the shed can move up there.
So the first step to getting your garage in order? Sort the attic.
To a cat, that would make no sense. But it’s project management 101.
That’s what I’ve been plugging away at: sorting the attic to clear the shed to free the garage to create space in the house. It’s tedious. It takes weeks, sometimes months, maybe even years. But I’m hopefully only halfway through life—and that’s a long time to reap the rewards of investing in order.
So, to anyone reading this: get organised, and liberate yourself.
Because chaos is costly. Order, on the other hand, gives you freedom.
Here’s a few pics of my own slow but steady progress towards organisation and liberation.
Dr Martin James 